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Talent_Distribution
Thursday, August 19, 2010
I talked about this a year or two ago that comp picks should be limited to the team who actually spent all their player development resources on the player. So, Orlando Hudson would only be a Type A had he become a free agent as a Blue Jays. RJ looks at this:
...but the point is: if the compensation rules are designed to replenish teams losing homegrown talent, then examples like this one prove that it doesn’t work. At least, if these examples are in the vast majority, which is what we’ll examine later today.
Of course, I’d prefer to not have comp picks at all, as it was an arcane structure designed when free agency was very much a crapshoot, with no precedence from other leagues to offer guidance. Now we know better, so no reason to be stuck to what was created in a vacuum 35 years ago. Other than “tradition” and “bargaining chip” of course.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Jeff weighs in. His thought process is right on. I just don’t know if the end-result is any difference.
***
To reply to Peter in the comments of that thread: I agree. Suppose someone is +30 as a RF. What would he be as a CF? Would you believe +30? If you took all the RF and moved them all to CF, they’d each get 33% more chances. So, the +30 RF becomes +40, and the -30 RF becomes -40. Now, suppose that you leave the +30 RF in CF, and restore all the other CF back in CF. Those guys are good. His +40, compared against all the other RF in CF will drop down to +30 when compared to the real CF. Had you instead left the -30 RF in CF, he would come in at -50 in CF.
Here’s a very very old article on the subject. It’s worth a re-read (though don’t pay too much attention to the numbers, as things have been revised since then).
Kincaid:
TW: I’ve been a very lucky guy. Even I know how lucky I’ve been, especially in my baseball career. Anybody who thinks he’s had great success or outstanding success, he’s a lucky guy. You’re damn right.
...
Somebody will hit .400, maybe .410 or .415. Oh, you bet. It’s a hard thing to do. Ya gotta be lucky. Baseball might be a little tougher today. They bring in a new pitcher any old time. Ya gotta go through that whole ritual again of trying to find out as much as ya can on six pitches. Ya hit at him four times, ya got a chance of gettin’ him locked in a little better.
And Kincaid finishes it off:
The same honesty let him publish his chart saying that he was only truly a .400 hitter on the very fattest of pitches, and saying that if the pitcher could paint the lower-outside corner perfectly against him, he could be reduced to a .230 hitter. Part of that honesty is that Williams had the sense to understand that no matter how great he was, his greatness was enabled by good fortune along the way, and that no amount of greatness can erase the role of chance and luck in the game. It’s that honest pursuit of objective knowledge of the game that makes Ted Williams a perfect pioneer in the field of sabermetrics. He looked for the truth of the game around him and learned to understand its workings, and then he very matter-of-factly presented the truths he learned with no bias toward his own career or his teammates or anything other than what he saw to be true. And that, in essence, is sabermetrics.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
As a followup to my Frenchy/Shea thread, how about I give you, since 1993, who has been a plus player at all five categories I mentioned (strike zone, power, contact, speed, fielding). Basically, the five-tool players. Here they are, in no particular order:
Carlos Beltran
ARod
Chase Utley
Larry Walker
JD Drew
Ellis Burks
David Wright
Grady Sizemore
Hanley Ramirez
Jeff Bagwell
Craig Burley asked via twitter the last time someone with no strengths to his game was allowed to play more often than Jeff Francoeur. I won’t bore you with all the math, but the name I came up with is Shea Hillenbrand. Shea had no patience at the plate, no power, slightly below average in contact, no speed, and no fielding ability.
Frenchy currently has 3325 PA. Shea retired with 3816 PA. Frenchy is only 491 PA from matching Shea.
If I compare French’s career through yesterday, to Shea’s career through July 31, 2006, we get this, with Frenchy on the left, and Shea on the right:
3091, 3108: AB
838, 840: R+RBI
170, 175: BB + HBP (excluding IBB)
179, 201: 2B+3B
99, 95: HR
22, 16: SB
The big difference between the two:
549, 602: singles
586, 399: strikeouts
And fielding-wise, Frenchy is better, which cancels out Shea’s advantage with singles.
Anyway, so the question is on the table: who was the last player who had as limited a game as Shea, but allowed to play more than he has? And will Frenchy continue on his path to exceed them?
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
Let’s say you have a runner that runs the 100m, and we observe his running time as 10.0 seconds, with one SD = 0.2 seconds. Let’s call this runner Aurora. And we have a second runner who averaged 10.1 seconds, witth one SD = 0.2 seconds. This runner is called Bolt.
How often will Aurora beat Bolt? Running a simulator 10,000 times, I get .640. I’m sure there’s a nice probability calculator that will give us the same result (if so, please share).
Let’s say we have a third runner, called Canuck, and he runs in 10.2 +/- 0.2. Bolt will beat him .640 times.
What are our expectations of Aurora beating Canuck? Well, the Odds Ratio suggests the following:
Read More
Monday, August 02, 2010
Suppose that God herself came to you and told you that she was going to do something devious: for the 2011 baseball season, every team would have 25 players of identical talent, with all 30 teams being equals. That no player would learn from each plate appearance, and no player would get hurt. That no player will even interact on the most basic level with each other, and if they did, it would be indistinguishable from any other interaction. No player would even age, having been frozen in time. All the games would be played in the same city, at the same time, in 15 identical ballparks, domed, and staffed by identical groundskeepers and HVAC guys. This is the most controlled science experiment ever: nothing can possibly ever change.
And after each team plays 162 games, you will get ten teams winning between 78 and 84 games, with ten winning fewer than 78 and 10 winning more than 84. All that would happen based purely on the only thing that differentiates each of the thirty teams and 750 ballplayers: luck.
We expect the distribution of wins to have one standard deviation equal to 6.4 wins. Imagine, one team will have 91 wins, and another will have 71 wins, and they are identical in all respects! They are identical because god told you. That if they played each other one million times, they’d each have a .500 record. But 162 games is not a million.
***
As it turns out, in reality, you don’t have ten of thirty teams that win outside of those 78 and 84 games. In the 12 seasons between 1998 to 2009, you had an average of ten teams that won less than 75 games, ten teams that won more than 87 games, and ten teams that won between 75 and 87 games. The distribution of actual wins is one standard deviation of 11.8 wins. INCLUDED in that 11.8 wins is the luck portion of 6.4 wins. The difference between the two is (11.8^2-6.4^2)^0.5, or 10.0 wins.
That is, when you look at the won-lost records of baseball teams, 60% of that is the talent and other vagaries of the participants, and 40% of that is luck. If you have a team that wins 91 games (+10 wins above average), that could be because it was +6 because of talent and +4 because of luck, or +12 because of talent and -2 because of bad luck, or -5 because of talent and +15 because of fantastic luck.
We don’t know for any one team, how we can work backwards from the W/L record. All we can do is make a best guess, and have a huge uncertainty level around that guess. Since it’s easy enough to take two identical god-told teams that won 91 games and 71 games and make them both 81 win teams, do you see how hard it would be to take a team that won 86 games and another that won 76 games and say that the 86-win team is in fact better than the 76-win team?
Sports, life actually, is played by unique persons. But luck, timing, good/back breaks plays a huge role in the outcomes. Not everything is luck. But not everything is talent either.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
I love this guy. He says the exact same things we do, but he says it while wearing a uniform. Because of that, the media shuts up and listens to him. I mean, just read his gems:
“It’s like flipping a coin. Everyone knows that you got a 50-50 chance of heads or tails. But maybe during the course of a baseball season, you flip it and it comes up heads seven or eight times. But over a million times, it’s going to come back to about a 50-50 ratio.”
...
“In terms of baseball, even the best teams need some luck. You have to have skill but you have to have luck, too.”
...
“This year is really the first time in my career it’s gone the other way. In 2007 I was lucky, 2008 I didn’t pitch that well, 2009 I pitched well and this year, I haven’t pitched great, but luck has been against me, too.”
...
“The reality is it’s a performance-based game,” he said. “It’s a business. So if you’re not performing well, it doesn’t matter why.”
...
“If it’s a mechanical thing, there would be something way out of whack with my peripherals, like my strikeouts would be way down or walks way up,” Bannister said. “I typically strike out about 5.5 guys a game and my walks are around three. I’m still right around there.”
...
“We’re in a stretch where I probably have flipped heads nine times in a row,” Bannister said. “I’m just saying if you get in a stretch like this and you start changing a lot of things, you can really get out of whack.
...
This year, the home-run thing has been frustrating but there is nothing that has changed with me. My career average says I’m right at a No. 4 starter.
“My goal is to pitch at a No. 3 starter level. Sometimes you get to No. 2. Sometimes you drop down to No. 4 or No. 5, and after that you’re in the minors.
“But I won five games in a row earlier this year and I was the same guy. Really.”
G-dd-mn beautiful.
Bannister has a career rate of 10% HR per FB, pretty much the league average. In 2010, he’s at 14.5%. With 150 FB, that puts him at 2 SD away. Given that we cherry-picked him, and given that we expect someone to be at 2 SD, there’s nothing there. Not unless you also tell me the HR he gives up are going farther as well.
And maybe they are. Last year, he had 8 HR go for at least 410 feet. This year, he already has 10. In order to figure out how significant that is, we need to see what it means to other pitchers. This may be the kind of indicator that can tell us if allowing long HR means something, similar to Bannister’s point here:
“A guy that worked at JP Morgan was doing a project on sports and the stock market and games in general, and what had more influence, skill or luck,” Bannister said. “He had this huge timeline. The most skill was chess where luck had the least influence. Then it was running, golf and tennis, and then you get to baseball right in the middle.
Is giving up long HR something basic, something that is mostly the domain of bad pitchers? Greg has the data there ready to be downloaded. You guys tell me.
What you CANNOT do is look at average HR distance. Please, don’t do that. Please. We’ve talked about this.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Matt takes a look at which teams are more likely to buy/sell players than they were at the beginning of the season.
Monday, July 19, 2010
One day, perhaps when Willie Bloomquist retires in ten years, I’m going to change the name WAR to W/W. He’s like the perfect replacement-level description of a player: a guy who plays multiple positions as well as you’d expect someone like that to do and hit as poorly as you’d expect a replacement-level player to hit, but who does it every single year.
I have this crazy theory that Willie Ballgame players (Craig Counsel, David Eckstein, Mike Cameron, Dustin Pedroia, etc… it seems that being a white 2B fits the bill) defy the typical aging patterns. These guys seem to improve in some way to compensate for their loss of physical skills. Just a thought, nothing I have sat down to study. It also goes into what scouts look for in terms of “heart”. You take two guys at age 21, and make the better guy the one with less heart, and the heart guy will have the much longer career.
Am I the only one to have this thought?
Monday, July 12, 2010
Albert Chen has this cover story article on SI:
There’s the across-the-board dip in offensive statistics: Through Sunday an average of 8.9 runs per game had been scored, down from the average of 9.3 through the same date last season. If that figure holds, this would be the first season with a per-game average under nine since 1992. Home runs are in similar decline—the rate of 1.85 per game would be the lowest since ‘93. Ditto for hits (the rate of 8.9 per team per game would be the lowest since ‘93) and overall ERA (4.16, on pace for the lowest mark since ‘92).
Comparing to the same date is good, so we see here that the drop is 4% based on half a season. Albert however does not give the same context for the other numbers he reports. Instead, he does the “on pace” thing, which I am totally against. As Phil notes:
Ignore the obvious problem that there will always be more pitchers “on pace” for a goal than actually reaching it (for instance, there are lots of players “on pace” for a 162-home run season after one game).
In any case, is that 0.20 runs per game per team (9.3 minus 8.9 divided by 2) that big a deal?
Albert and I had an email interview a few weeks ago, and the reason that I do only emails and never phone calls is so that everything I do and say is recorded, and so, I can repost everything I say to a member of the media. I realize that 1% of what I see gets published, so I get to post the other 99% here. What follows is everything I said to Albert on this issue:
From 1901 to 2009, which is 108 back-to-back seasons, there have been 36 times that the runs per game dropped by at least 0.13 runs per game. There have been 31 times that the runs per game increased by at least 0.13 runs per game. And another 41 times where the runs per game was within 0.13 runs per game. That we are currently witnessing a drop of 0.13 runs per game (with still 3 months to go, and still summer months to enjoy) is about as non-story as there is, other than the people’s desire to look for streak stories, or hot-and-cold stories.
I don’t know how many people are actually saying this [pitchers taking over, less power]. For the people who are saying this, then yes [they are overstating it]. For the people who are not saying this, they understand the situation. Now, you tell me whether the majority understand, or are overstating it. I presume the majority understand.
The drop is around the 33rd percentile (or 67th percentile, depending on your perspective). A story is when something is at the 95th or 99th percentile.
From 2004-2006, the runs per game went from 4.81 to 4.59 to 4.86.
From 2000-2002, it dropped by 0.52 runs in two seasons.
From 1987-1988, it dropped by 0.58 runs in one season, after previously increasing by 0.31 runs per game.
1976-79: 3.99 to 4.47 to 4.10 to 4.46. THOSE are big changes.
And the real “year of the pitcher” changes: 1962-1963: drop of 0.51 runs per game 1968-69: increase of 0.65 runs per game, followed by another 0.27 runs per game.
What is missing is historical perspective. And, that’s hard to believe, given the ease in which this data is available. We don’t need experts. We need less people to make stuff up.
This stuff happens in two seasons out of every three. It’s typical, not fluky, and certainly not a trend.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
From July 12, 2009 to July 11, 2010, Felix Hernandez: 35 starts, 17-7, 2.68 ERA, 252 IP, 227 K, 77 BB.
And yet, of the 82 (!) all-stars named, none of them are Felix. If you name enough all-stars to fill four teams, why not actually HAVE four teams? How about a double-header of 7 innings each?
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
Other “lesser” leagues offer more. There’s always a danger that if you pay too low that you get a new WHA on your hands. Baseball and American Football is pretty regional, but I can see a time when the NBA will get itself a firm challenger overseas, just as the NHL already has the potential for challenge with the KHL.
Benevolent monarchs are good. They just don’t really exist much or stay benevolent long.
Tuesday, July 06, 2010
win% Year
0.532 2010
0.548 2009
0.591 2008
0.544 2007
0.611 2006
0.540 2005
0.504 2004
Per 162 games, that’s a difference of 5 wins in 2010.
When we talked about this a few months ago:
http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/superiority_of_al_over_nl/
Where MGL noted:
In 2009, for all IL games in a NL park, the home team was a .515 favorite. In the AL parks, it was .566. So the AL teams overall were .5255.
In 08, it was .518 and .570, or .526 for the AL, and in 07, it was .516 and .568, or .526 again.
Presuming the 2010 odds came out the same way (around .526… MGL, can you confirm), then Vegas was slightly underappreciating the difference. Not much frankly. And I may have been overestimating somewhat.
That thread started because I asserted that BPro’s gap in talent level was too narrow:
That’s why I’m using 8 wins, as halfway between the historical data (1996-2010) of 4 wins and the recent data (2005-2010) of 12 wins. If I did a weighted average, and used each season as 20% more than the previous, I get 8.5 wins. If I use 10% instead, I get 6.5 wins. Whatever it is, it’s far more than 2.7 wins.
2010 “played” as a 5 win difference, compared to the recent historical 7 or 8 wins. Vegas was checking in with around 4.2 wins in 2008, 2009. Probably the best answer today is probably a 6 win difference per 162 games, or the AL having a true talent .520 win% and the NL having a true talent .480 win%, and when they play each other, it results in close to a .540 win% for the AL. I’ve been using .525/.475, .550 entering 2010.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Wezen-ball reported last year on a poll from around 1990 whereby the sportswriters voted Evans over Rice for the Hall of Fame. Somehow The Legend of The Feared Hitter grew, while The Legend of The Feared Arm diminished.
This article is pretty standard fare around here, but it’s always good for the newbies arriving into the middle of the saberist conversation.
The Individualized Won-Loss records for various outfielders (min 80 wins):
181-29 Rickey
119-37 Gwynn
113-42 Raines
122-68 Da Winfield
112-48 Dw Evans
108-52 Dawson
89-32 Chet Lemon
85-36 Fred Lynn
84-39 Kirby P
86-48 Da Murphy
82-33 Ge Foster
86-52 most feared hitter evah
82-45 De White
84-45 Ke Singleton
82-47 Wi Wilson
88-65 Da Parker
83-68 Chili D
91-82 Ha Baines
It’s really pretty sad how the correct line can’t be drawn.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Of WAR accumulated over the 4 year span of ages 21-24, Albert Pujols ranks as #2 all-time (of players born since Ruth). In the top 100 for that age group is Carlos Beltran and Ozzie Guillen among others. From age 25-27, these 100 best players accumulated an average of 14.5 WAR. I’ll call that age 26.
Of WAR accumulated over the 4 year span of ages 22-25, Mickey Mantle leads the way, and in the top 100 we find Lenny Dystra, among others. Those 100 best-of-the-best 100 players accumulated an average of 14.7 WAR from ages 26-28 (which I’ll call age 27).
So, what I’m doing here is focusing on the best-of-the-best for each age class. And the best 21-24 year olds ended up with a slightly less WAR at age 26 than the best-of-the-best 22-25 year olds at age 27. Hence, players peak higher at age 27 than age 26.
Do you like this method?
Repeating this for all age groups, here are the 3-yr WAR for the 100 best players at each age class:
3WAR Age
11.1 25
14.5 26
14.7 27
15.0 28
14.4 29
14.0 30
13.6 31
13.5 32
11.8 33
11.0 34
9.5 35
7.9 36
6.2 37
5.1 38
3.3 39
2.2 40
The peak age for the best players is age 28.
If you guys are good with this, I’ll repeat for pitchers. I haven’t seen the results yet, but I’m pretty interested.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
My gut instinct is to say that there’s not enough data here to show anything of meaning. Perhaps one of you is interested enough to spend 5 minutes to tell me if I’m right or not (PDF).
Glove-slap: Mitch.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Exactly how I would do it… back when I used to care about the ASG. I don’t remember exactly when I stopped caring. I know I LOVED the 1987 All-Star Game (because of you-know-who). I also really enjoyed the Moises Alou ASG, whenever that was. Sometime after that though, that’s when I punted the ASG.
(Zimmerman’s fielding is ranked way too low.)
Friday, June 04, 2010
So says J-Doug.
(I can’t see any of the charts from the office.)
Saturday, May 29, 2010
I sent Gabriel a list of pitchers who were in the batting lineup other than 9th, since 1952. Here’s his observations:
Here’s the story behind Andy Sonnanstine batting 3rd - in an AL game, no less, and forcing Longoria to the bench.
http://scores.espn.go.com/mlb/recap?gameId=290517130&teams=cleveland-indians-vs-tampa-bay-rays
And then Tovar was a Campaneris gimmick:
Tovar
p,c,1b,2b,ss,3b,lf,cf,rf
Johnny Lindell is interesting too. He was out of the majors for three years before making a comeback as a starting pitcher at age 36. And that’s everybody who has batted below 1st-5th in the last 60 years.
On interesting thing to look at - average career batting stats of pitchers batting in each slot by decade.
I like this too:
Pitcher batting 8th
1950s - 69+ (i assume there are a lot of missing games in the 50s)
1960s - 0
1970s - 2
1980s - 0
1990s - 76
2000s - 350
Pitcher batting 7th
1950s - 33+
1960s - 1 (Drysdale)
1970s - 1 (Steve Renko)
1980s - 0
1990s - 1 (Charles Nagy)
2000s - 2 (Dontrelle x2)
Pitcher batting 6th
1950s - 15+ (Mel Parnell x3, Willard Nixon x4, Mickey McDermott x3, 5 others)
1960s - 1 (Gary Peters - not a great hitter, but better than the shortstops of the time, except not Aparacio, who batted 8th)
1970s - 1 (Frank MacCormack - this is a lineup error like the Sonnanstine issue)
1980s - 0
1990s - 0
2000s - 0
I don’t know where the holes are in the boxscores, but it appears that the pitcher batting 6th stops in 1953. Pitcher batting 7th and 8th stops in 1957.
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